Steen Ipsen, a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy and the Kolding School of Design, headed the academy's ceramics and glass department for several years. Thanks to his inclusion in major international collections, in particular at the MAD Museum in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, his work is widely known throughout the world.
Ipsen's research into spherical and elliptical shapes has been going on for more than ten years. His design education affects the way he solves the spatial compositions of his sculptures. Since 2012, for greater expressiveness, the sculptor has been using PVC or leather cords as a connecting link between individual forms. It appears as though the cords have difficulty holding the spherical shapes that defy gravity and try to fly apart in different directions.
In an essay for the catalog released to mark the opening of Steen Ipsen's Organic Reflection exhibition at Gallery HB381, curator Garth Johnson writes: “Ipsen's path to such objects began in the early 2000s with an exploration of the sphere as a geometric element accompanying other forms in his vocabulary. As in all his previous works, Ipsen worked through his ideas methodically. The fast pace of working with objects allowed him to evaluate those combinations of form and surface that, in his opinion, were most effective. Over the course of several years, the polychrome glaze became thinner, and the sculptor began to give preference to local colors and use monochrome compositions. The sculptures thus acquire greater solidity, and bright colors give them a playful and seductive look. The revolution in blobject design was undoubtedly brought about by 3D computer modeling, but Ipsen works in a deliberately low-tech way, painstakingly modeling his balls and ellipses by hand."